The creative critic's paradise

Tag Archives: New York Times

It’s the end of 2016, and I know what you’re thinking: finally. It’s been a rough year in general, but it’s been particularly bad for movie and music lovers.

But now it’s time to get ready for the New Year, and that means we need be positive. We need to, guys. So in that spirit, let’s take a moment to reflect on the good that 2016 brought us (except for that one about the disappointing movies, but the writer made some good points). Enjoy!

“Year-end lists are stories: they tell the truth by lying. The idea that a critic can watch all the television there is today, let alone isolate the 10 best works across wildly different genres, is a fiction. But play along with it, and you tell a larger tale of what mattered this year and why.”

“The worst movies don’t open in theaters, they go straight to DVD or VOD, and some of us never want to speak of them again. So instead I’m offering up a list of movies that promised so much — typically due to the proven talent involved — but delivered noticeably less.”

Take a look at your list and check off this selection of the year’s best books from the editors of Publisher’s Weekly. The list features a lot of nonfiction, including “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond, “A Kingdom of Their Own: The Family Karzai and the Afghan Disaster” by Joshua Partlow, and “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets” by Svetlana Alexievich.

In this video, The A.V. Club’s Josh Modell and John Teti unpack the “swag” (i.e. merchandise) they’ve been getting from movie studios and other Hollywood bigwigs over the course of the year. There are a lot of USB drives, and there’s also booze. Don’t send The A.V. Club stuff unless it’s really good, is the lesson here. (It’s actually pretty hilarious, check it out.)

Here’s to 2017 – may our television shows maintain their character development, may our movies keep CGI to a minimum, and may our books make us smarter.

“There are times when such efforts can appear profoundly self-serving; when bearing witness or showing compassion feels more like public performance than real acknowledgement or understanding of another.”

“It’s never been easy for an Asian-American actor to get work in Hollywood, let alone take a stand against the people who run the place. But the recent expansion of Asian-American roles on television has paradoxically ushered in a new generation of actors with just enough star power and job security to speak more freely about Hollywood’s larger failures.”

“This is a cast that is easily likable, but the creative teams behind it aren’t giving us anything that feels fresh. No matter how many new visual tricks, or beloved characters and moments it adapts from comics, it seems like more of the same. And even though Oscar Isaac is a great actor, Apocalypse is an indistinct big bad whose stakes are so high that it has a numbing effect on the audience. The fact that he looks like Ivan Ooze the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show just feels like a twisting of the knife. ”

“Out popped Oliver Sacks, peering at me uncertainly. His prosopagnosia, or face blindness, made him unable to recognize me from my author photo. When I told him who I was, he engulfed me in a great big bear hug.”

“After all, artists innovate — it’s what we do, no matter what our medium is. We imagine ways forward that no one else has imagined before, in literature, music, theater, dance, art, performance. There’s no reason we can’t do it with economics as well.”

“It was support from teachers that helped students feel connected to school. Further, rigor without attention to social-emotional and talent development proved to be a deal-breaker, especially for adolescents at this critical period of identity development. We came to understand how proactive schools needed to be in building collaboration with families.”